Review: Motorola’s Droid Turbo beats the Moto X in specs, if not style

Motorola's Moto line of phones has gotten plenty of praise from reviewers including us—they're priced competitively and keep the superfluous features and Android skins to a minimum. If nothing else, Motorola's approach is a welcome respite from the everything-and-also-the-kitchen-sink approach of the market leader and many of its other competitors.

Motorola also makes another line of smartphones that has a longer history but gets less attention in the present day: the co-branded, Verizon-exclusive Droid phones that stretch all the way back to the original 2009 Motorola Droid. More recent, post-Google Droids from Motorola have been distant cousins to the Moto phones. They use many of the same components and value-added features, but Verizon's involvement means the software is more heavy-handed. The designs are more angular and "industrial" (for lack of a better word).

The Droid Turbo is the newest member of the Droid family and the follow-up to last year's Droid Ultra and Droid Maxx (whether we can expect a new Droid Mini is anyone's guess). The phones don't look much alike, but in many ways the Turbo is an amped-up, slightly more expensive version of the 2014 Moto X we reviewed earlier this year. So if you're a Verizon customer, should you stick to the standard Moto X, or does the Turbo add enough to be worth a look?